Ellison and Ramsay decided to dial any numbers they could find on the Goldman Sachs website. Every single person that answered hung up on them.

Eventually, someone answered and suggested that perhaps they were calling about an upcoming conference Goldman Sachs was sponsoring, “Pipeline Crisis Winning Strategies.”

Ellison and Ramsay had no idea what she was talking about, but they went along with it and ended up receiving tickets to the conference.

‘You could feel how much money was in the room’

A few weeks later, they boarded a $10 bus from Boston to New York City, Ellison wearing an ill-fitting suit he’d borrowed from his roommate.

As soon as they arrived at the conference, Ellison said, they knew they looked out of place: Everyone there was at least 40 years old and established in their careers. “You could feel how much money was in the room,” Ellison said.

Undeterred, Ellison and Ramsay started going up to people and pitching BASE: “Hey, so I’m working with this nonprofit that I founded…” Most people were dismissive.

They might have been out of luck had they not crashed one of the conference panels. Ramsay asked a question about the root causes of the dropout trend that stumped the panelists.

Multiple people came up to Ellison and Ramsay afterward to meet the precocious youth who’d asked the question. Some were lawyers at a top New York City firm, and one worked at the Goldman Sachs Foundation.

The following year, Ellison’s cofounder spoke at the conference

The founders arranged meetings with some of the executives who’d approached them, and continued to send them regular progress updates. They would even work their political capital, offering to connect one executive they’d spoken to with others they’d met.

Within months, they’d been appointed to the committee that planned the Pipeline Crisis Winning Strategies conference. Ramsay even earned a spot on one of the panels.

Goldman Sachs was shocked to see Ellison and Ramsay again. “How are you here?” Ellison remembered one executive asking.

Cold contacting a successful person can (sometimes) be a winning strategy

While Ellison and Ramsay may have used an extreme strategy to build their business, they’re hardly the only people to cold call or cold message their way to success.

For example, Elliot Bell sent Kathryn Minshew, CEO of The Muse, a cold LinkedIn message after he saw her speak at a conference. Bell ended up getting hired as the head of marketing at The Muse (even though they hadn’t been looking to fill that role).

Meanwhile, Liz Wessel, CEO of WayUp, has all her employees cold email their idols. Wessel herself emailed her biggest role model asking for 15 minutes of her time, and the woman invited her to come to dinner at her house the next night.

Wessel’s advice for cold emailing is rather different from the technique Ellison and Ramsay used. Her specific pointers include: Make the message personal and identify one small thing you’d like to get out of the meeting.

‘I’m scared to death, but I’m jumping in anyway’

BASE is no longer in operation. Ellison said it fell apart during the 2008 financial crisis.

Since then, Ellison has launched a number of organizations, including the Y Combinator-backed Class Metric, which aimed to increase student engagement and comprehension. CodePath.org, where Ellison is currently CEO, is geared toward boosting the number of high-performing, underrepresented software engineers in the tech industry.

Back in the BASE days, Ellison said he didn’t have a particular strategy when he set out cold calling, or pitching, or meeting with executives.

“Growing up, I was very introverted and self-conscious,” he said. “It took years for me to embrace the uncomfortable.” Even today, his overall life philosophy is to do almost anything that makes him squirm, even if he’s terrified while doing it.

Ellison called it a “theme” in his life, noting that he’s rarely fearless. “I’m scared to death, but I’m jumping in anyway.”